


Crow's Moon

by StormBlue



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Norse Religion & Lore, F/M, heavy au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-09-19 19:25:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormBlue/pseuds/StormBlue
Summary: Forced to live together, Jago Sevatar and his unwilling wife somehow made it work. But peace isn't for murderers, and the planet roils with the weight of its toxic past. With his powers now awakening and his wife's own muddied future coming to light, things are never what they seem...Updates semi-weekly, based heavily on alternate Norse mythology and the events of Ragnarok.





	1. Ragnarok

“That was the last goat.” 24-WLF announced from the wind beaten frame, shouldering shut its heavy oaken door. Her face and hair were streaked white with snow, cheeks fully flushed as she struggled to regain warmth. “They’re trying to fucking starve us.”

“I know.” Came a soft reply from the frigid dark. Sevatar doused the fire when he heard the wailing to avoid attracting attention, plunging the long house into a gloaming night only the far north was capable of. Then the livestock had begun to scream. Blood curdling cries that lasted for an hour and a half. They were doing this on purpose, surely. Always a small handful at a time each night. Neither husband nor wife played into the trap. Going outside when they were hunting was dangerous. Best let them take the livestock and investigate afterwords. 

Clutching at her heavy cloak, 24-WLF shivered and stumbled towards the figure of her husband crouched in front of the dead hearth like an ivory gargoyle. He hadn’t moved much since the flames were smothered nor did he wear much save for a woolen tunic and trousers. Anyone else would have been slowly freezing to death. Going outside for just five minutes to check the pins pushed 24-WLF to her limits and she was swaddled in a leather cloak layered over several quilted petticoats. When she knelt to touch his white skin with her cheek it was icy yet motionless. Free of mortal shivering. 

“They got into the grain stores too.” She continued as Sevatar stroked her cheek with huge, chilly fingers.

“Since when did they become omnivores?” His joke was full of malice, colored with a thoughtless grin of hooked flesh. “Now they’re starting to piss me off.”

“I have my old hell gun, but I have no idea if the packs even charge anymore.” She whispered, gloved hands seeking what little warmth the hearth still radiated. The Nightlord’s bare feet padded across creaking wood, fetching pelts from the bed to drape across his wife. His ink dark eyes were beginning to squint as the weak fimbrelbwinter sun started to appear over the tree-jagged horizon. He could see it through the windows, pale and practically useless to humans, but searing to his corneas. Closing the drapes, he then pressed cold, bloodless lips to his wife’s cheek. 

“I’ll take care of it. Someone will need to be in the long house if they try to break in.” He replied.

“Do you think they will?”

“They are soulless, thoughtless things.” Sevatar began to answer. “If they have an idea between them it’s to hunt and eat and kill. Intelligence shouldn’t be something we need to worry about.”

She snorted. “But starving will be. At least for me.”

Another hooked smile, almost genuine. “I will feed you their meat, dear wife. You will not go hungry.”

The woman exhaled a silver curl of frost. “If I don’t freeze first.”

“Then I shall peel the hide from their bones and sew you a new coat.” The tone became almost teasing. He would have enjoyed leading into something more serious, but the cold was pressing in through the long house like a bad miasma. It killed more readily than any animal or forest prowler ever did. Food would become inedible, water would freeze and disease would be the sloth that rotted the idle from the inside out. He could survive of course, just as he had on long dead Nostromo. Bark could be peeled away from birch trees, their meat consumed and sap drank dry. He could melt ice in his mouth for hydration and he could pick the bones of things that died in the freeze. Nothing ever went bad during fimbrelbwinter.

But his wife? She would be forced to squat in that dying house, sore from shivering and starving from a lack of food no fire would ever be hot enough to cook safely. Death would probably be only a week away if he was quick. Much sooner if he was not.

No, these things he had just classified as ’thoughtless’ were indeed waging war on them in a way a Nightlord might have. If that Nightlord had only the most basic understanding of war, that is. Indeed, he was truly growing angry. Sevatar craved the sight of blood. 

A small cough broke his attention. 24-WLF’s parched throat ached and she sipped greedily at water she could have had an easier time gulping down had it been warm. Her body heat hadn’t done much to thaw the icy drink and it was stealing what violent shivering was trying to fix. She threw the metal canteen in the fading embers, perhaps hoping for a little reprieve. 

“I will get the fire started again. They won’t attack during the morning.” He stated suddenly. 

“What morning?” She laughed breathlessly. “We light this fire and we’ll be a beacon at the end of a trail of grain and goat blood.” She grabbed the barely warmed container and sucked at it again, mouth dry and tacky. “Their blood will be a hot drink, husband. Fetch me a goblet of it.”

Sorely tempted to give her heat of his own making, pleasure began to flood his loins, but he forced himself back. Instead the Astartes furiously kissed and bit at her, clean sharp teeth marking freckled flesh. Sevatar was beyond excited, beyond angry. The ancient kill hormones were in his veins again and he loved their sting as they flashed through organs and hard muscle. The chain glaive that hung silent for years would now get to snarl again. Oh, it still ran. He always made sure of that, but the engine only had the privilege of idling. Now…now it would get to know meat too stupid to know what horror they were hunting. 

Wind blasted against the oaken walls of the long house, shuddering its frame work and pulling at sealed windows as if possessing claws. Frost crackled across thick panes, forming into strange, unseemly patterns behind the drapes. Something…heavy banged against the roof and then vanished. Sevatar went completely still, hunched heavily over his shivering wife. Light began to slowly fade away, pulling sideways into the encroaching darkness. 

Confused, 24-WLF snatched away from his arms to peer warily out through a slit in the fabric. “I…Sev, the sky.”

The tone of her voice made him pause. The woman seemed scared. This was a woman who simply did not get scared. He’d tried. She’d practically had it bred out of her. Bare feet crossed the wood soundlessly, pupil swollen eyes barely tolerating the brightness only to see the wane disk of the sun being literally devoured.

“It’s an eclipse.” He began to chide her at first. “Just an astro…logical…”

The Nightlord’s voice caught in his throat. Within his brain a fire had been lit. A sharp, bright pain that hadn’t plagued his skull in vast eons. Hot nails punctured the back of his eyes until the tear ducts bled, a thicker acid tinged rivulet running down the corner of his twitching mouth. 24-WLF watched, confused and anxious as her husband slowly backed away from the purpling window only to have him seize up and crash to the floor with a bone jarring thump. 

“The veil thins.” He whispered jerkily between convulsions, leaking acid and crimson onto the gnarled wood. “I can feel the warp in my head. I can hear the dead again. Haha…they’ve been waiting for me.”

Now the woman was borderline terrified. Fear was always a strange emotion for her to process. It felt like ice but burned like fire through her bones until she started to feel pain or worse. All she could do was watch as the sky beyond the curtains molted like a healing bruise and the wailing came again. Like a cascade of wolves descending from the injured clouds, howling and screaming as they fell. A black rain of fur and fangs. 

“I understand, I think.” He breathed, gradually beginning to pick his massive frame off the floor as the pain somehow settled. “Skoll has finally eaten the sun. Hasn’t he?” He was asking no one in particular. Sevatar’s eyes had gained two pinpricks of glowing white at their dead centers, and 24-WLF wasn’t sure if it was a reflection or some sort of inner light fighting to break free. From the way he constantly twitched and squinted she figured it was very much the later. 

“Ragnarok?” She guessed, finally moving to grab weapons from the racks. Old knives and serrated shovels clattered against mounted shelves until she pulled down an old length of stained Imperial steel. The woman hadn’t used this saber since her second mare Huldra had been alive. Its touch was pleasing, like visiting an old friend. “I thought that was just some old story the villagers came up with to explain the taint in these damned woods?”

“Oh, foolish us.” Sevatar cackled softly. “What are legends if not born from truth?”

He was talking strangely now. Distantly. Not entirely there. 24-WLF’s lips tugged into a frown. “You’ve killed legends before. You’ve killed Angels and you’ve killed demons. We can kill whatever the fuck it out there too.” She gestured with the saber. "It’s just the warp playing its dirty Hel tricks on us again. It always had a thing for you, hasn’t it?”

“Yesss. It has.” Sevatar hissed, turning away from the window. The pinpricks of white had grown to the size of a fingertip, pulsing hot. Something…something awful had awakened within him. When he spoke visions of glossy black feathers scraped across her eyes. Crows that had not been in the long house before chattered from the rafters, but enticed no fear response from the woman.

Beyond 24-WLF’s shoulder, entirely unseen by her but noticed by the Nightlord, an enormous white mare lingered. She stood large and awkward in the room. Ribs were exposed to the chill and her flayed head hung only a meter or so from the ceiling. It dipped, bumping gently against the woman that had been her rider. The rider did not feel a thing. Sevatar began to smile again, the corners stretching wide as he observed a second mare, smaller but similarly stripped of skin, walk slowly to his wife’s side. The honored dead had given him their blessings, it seemed.

“It’s going to be all right, dear wife.” He whispered, tone shifting. Approaching the woman, his hands gently cradled her face. Each one was as massive and broad as 24-WLF's chest. They could easily crush her skull but instead they raked back flaxen blonde hair shaven into a single strip running across her pale scalp. The crows hushed their chatter, watching. The mares stared with empty sockets, placid. “Dress me for battle.”

Sevatar left 24-WLF back in the long house, knowing full well she would not be able to fight her way through the ice and snow. He’d given her very specific instructions at that. Barricade the door with the warding bar sat across the locks, keep the fire doused but stay near the hearth. Deeply, he knew the warding rod, whittled into the idea of some eyeless Nostroman serpent scrawled with hateful runes, could only do so much. Minor warp things despised it. He’d bled and spat curses upon the ancient hunk of wood until it might as well have been blessed steel. But…well, what the crows spoke of now was far worse than minor warp things. Old sins become revealed, they were saying. They never spoke enough to make much sense, but now that the veil of reality had holes poked through they wouldn’t shut up. It did nothing for their coherence, however. Somehow he had a feeling they weren’t talking about him, for once. 

They’d liked his wife at least. While she dressed him they crackled her name in soft whispers, as if accepting the woman in some half-silent ritual. Questioning them would have been a waste of time. The mares were there, so he had no need to leave some of the crows with her either. The dead protected the ones they left behind.

Ah, but they weren’t crows, were they? As they followed him through the dim lavender morning, their ebony faces warped and smeared among the trees. Beaks became sneering, naked teeth. Feathers fell off hunched shoulders as hair, and eyes that should have been as black as his own became disturbingly human. No, indeed these were not crows, but the countless spirits of the dead translating themselves into the only form he was apparently familiar with. Seems as though they’d almost completely forgotten they were once human. 

Above them the sun was a knot of darkness in a vaguely glowing sky, no defined light source anywhere save for sickening streaks of color that passed through the storm clouds. Snow had piled up to his knees in just the short amount of time he’d been outside beating a trail through the birchwood. The long house might sooner be buried if he didn’t hurry, but the crows had promised him a lot of things about what he was about to face. Never directly of course. Demons of Tzeench spoke with more coherence than they. Indeed the dead could be quite stupid.

Requesting that they shut up with no small amount of subtly saw no results either. Instead he continued to fight his way through the wane light trying to claw its way through the gnarls of branch and crow. Miles vanished under his leather booted feet until…ah, the howling again. 

He knew Wolves when he heard them. How could he forget? Only Russ’s lot would find some enjoyment in prowling about the cold like this. Strange that he couldn’t see them, but he could smell them easily enough. The dry, bitter winter loved to steal scent from the air, but Astartes biology hardly applied. Sevatar’s heckles rose, sensing he’d been suddenly approached before he’d been given even a second to process it. That wasn’t normal. He simply just wasn’t sneaked up on. At all. Everything moved at an agonizingly slow pace when he went to war. Figures would drag across stale air until he filled it with their spilt blood. Immediately the pain flared again, drawing forth a fresh welter of acid and drool from his mouth but he stood firm, grinning into the darkness. “Well, well. Which Wolf do I have the pleasure of greeting? If your looking for Russ, I can promise you that dirty pile of pelts isn’t here.”

The voice that replied wasn’t in low gothic, or even high gothic or Fenrisian, but in the slogging tones of the local language. “Hati and Skoll have finally caught their prey.” It intoned. “Fimbrlwinter has set in. And you, Loki, your eyes burned black from venom, have escaped your punishment.”

By then the speaker had stepped forward into the mockery of light put out by the sky. He was massive, reaching a head over Sevatar’s own and bedecked in not much more then ruined, ancient war plate the color and sheen of tarnish gold. Instead of a helm, the Wolf wore only a hood of tattered fur that blended in seamlessly with its equally tattered mane. What shone under the under were a set of smoldering eyes poised above jaws that might as well have belonged to the animal the mangey Chapter was named for. Hypertrophic metallic fangs rendered its speech difficult, but savage. A golden mane of hair…or perhaps fur hung tightly braided, framing a long face largely hidden in shadow. Much of it seemed to be not much more than a sheet of scar tissue. 

For half a second Sevatar was dumbfounded. The unironic misuse of the name had him cackling madly a mere moment later. “Loki? Is that who you think I am?” He managed between choking laughs, unable to believe the delusion of it all. “I knew Russ’s mangey lot where unclean things, but I didn’t know they got themselves caught up in local legends so fully they would intentionally make that mistake!”

He’d only been laughing for a moment, but that’s all it took. None the less, he laughed louder even as the world blurred around him. Pain that wasn’t originating from his head for once bloomed across his flank. An ancient force sword held in the Wolf’s shaggy paws had crashed into his ribs, sending him flying into a birch tree. Crows cackled and screamed in his wake, distracting his assailant long enough for him to drain the humor from his face. He wasn’t laughing now.

“Oh.” He said. “You're serious.” Sevatar used the sturdy shaft of his chain glaive to stand. “Well then, I suppose I’ll have to humor you.”

Thumbing its activation rune, the toothed weapon roared and became a blinding arc of iron in the clearing. Ancient blade met ancient teeth in a flurry of sparks and shrilling metal. The tip of the sword, haloed in a corona of indigo lightning, caught on the fangs of the glaive and smoked as several snapped from the howling edge. Sevatar felt the searing fragments through his woolen tunic. His war plate couldn’t be donned without aide and 24-WLF was not trained in such a matter. This didn't bothered the Prince of Crows of course. Skinning a Wolf was easy.

He smirked through the glaive’s indignant snarl, all teeth and kill-urge. The Wolf stared back at him, or rather the Wulfen. Clearly what had been a man wasn’t human anymore, or even Astartes. What had once been a face was now a bald muzzle full of metal fangs hanging in the shadow of an oversized hood. Just above moldering blue eyes that weren’t much more than a churning pit of warp energy. A psyker, like him. 

That explained a lot, Sevatar faintly realized, as he spun away from the mutant. A son of an unclean, deluded lot scrabbling against a son of a clan of murderers and psychopaths. The Wolf? He denied everything. He could see it in his eye. The maddened sense of festering self righteousness infused with self loathing. It was all there. The Nightlord could see it as a poisoned crown dangling in a broken circle above the other’s head, dripping and seething. He wondered what crown a Prince of Crows is meant to wear?

Time slowed to a crawl. The familiar, comforting sloth that came when battle reached its apex. He saw the Wolf, poised to strike at him with a jabbing thrust, frozen as surely as the snow at their feet. Sevatar did not know the meaning of hesitation and jammed the teeth into the Wolf’s left vambrace, it’s sputtering but hungry engines begging for blood. It bit viciously into the spear arm, screaming even as his opponent’s face twisted in agonizing slowness. Then, the image flickered. 

True wolves capered at the edge of his vision, blue and ethereal. Confused, the Nightlord almost didn’t continue following through with his swing until he realized reality itself was glitching. The sluggish visage was torn away, replaced with nothing but jaws and fur, snapping madly at his body, hitting bone.

Hissing, Sevatar flung himself backwards, swiping and goring until everything erupted into a storm of snow and shaggy fur. When reality reestablished itself and time began to tick again, the Wolf was slumped over, a giant paw slapped over a massive gash left in its forearm. An arm that should have been severed. Sevatar stared back, grinning and indignant. 

“I know your tricks, Loki.” The Wolf croaked, lifting its dripping paw away as the ravaged, exposed muscles started to heal. “I am Heimdall, the wielder of the gjallerhorn! The controller of the Bifrost! I know all. I see all!” 

Sevatar sniggered shamelessly. “Oh, so you claim to be all seeing now! How delightful!” He clapped mockingly, licking blood away from his lips. A gash opened up when one of the spectral wolves snagged his brow, pulling flesh away nearly to the bone. The icy sting felt good, like battle stims laced with something worse. 

“We know where Sigyn is.” Odin smirked. “She will not be able to save your eyes from the venom any longer.”

Sevatar did not reply immediately, but his stance and behavior changed. He was done humoring the Wolf. The man stalked forward now, a beast among equals and the worst among them. 

“Do you now?” He whispered, so soft Heimdall needed to perk its oversized ears to hear.

“You reside in the old long hou-.” It said no more. The Wolf’s words were replaced by a howl of agony as Sevatar surged forward and spat a globule of bubbling acid directly into Heimdall’s precious eyes. 

Warp fire bled painfully from the boiling orbs, indigo tinged with the bright red of Astartes blood. No longer did the Wolf sound anything like a man. Noises more befitting a sick animal continued to explode from its throat, sounding suspiciously like the barking of a war horn...before the Nightlord ducked below thrashing, hairy limbs, getting in nice and close. Then he put his own razored teeth to his enemy’s throat. The howl became a deafening roar, reaching a fever pitch before a wet tearing sound silenced it. 

Sevartar gagged, spitting out blood and fur, nearly vomiting from the wretched taste that ensued. There was something especially foul in the geneseed he’d just removed with his teeth. It pulsed, ink black in the snow. He lashed out at the crows as they tried to pounce on the bloody morsel before he ground it into the dirt with the heel of his boot. 

“But we were…” Came a burbling voice behind him. 

Sevatar turned to find Heimdall hanging in the air by nothing, neck bending awkwardly to favor the brand new hole in its trachea. At first the Nightlord thought the damned thing had somehow lived through the violent removing of its genneseed, but no, it was dead. Half digested eyes stared back at him, unseeing. No breath bubbled through the wound so where the words came from was anyone’s fresh guess.

“We were fated to defeat each other!” The voice shouted. “The runes…”

The clearing as a whole fidgeted. Even the air convulsed as Heimdalls’s body crumbled and was swallowed up by a spot of darkness staining the forest. As if the Wolf had been nothing more than a figment of a sick, tormented world stuck in an eternal loop of time. Was that what this was? Some sort of tidally locked happenstance that repeated itself because it didn’t know any better?

Sevatar looked down at his boots. The ugly black stain where he spat up tissue and geneseed was gone too. Every spot of blood shed by the damned Wolf went missing. No wonder it tasted off, the Nightlord sorely mused. The realm’s memory must have been thrown, it’s recollections of false gods age-rotten half to death. He wasn’t Loki, he couldn’t be, it must have finally realized. He was something new and terrible, come to unravel the myth, sear through repetition. Ruin a perfectly good world-wide apocalypse.


	2. Sleipnir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world has awakened from a long dead memory, angry and sick.

When Sevatar finally returned to the long house, it was no more. Birchwood panels the color of filthy ash laid in a near perfect circle around the property, reduced to splinters. His mind reeled and his legs beat a staccato rhythm through the waist deep snow, searching madly. As morning translated into daytime proper, the sky only became more saturated, hiding details under a grave shroud of violet and gold. His eyes, adapted to only the darkest of nights, struggled to see even with the woolen hood shadowing them. Still, the center points glowed white. Still he felt the distant ache in his head, now tinged with something closer to fear.

His boots tramped up the foundation, clanking loudly over the abused and naked floor. Whatever furniture existed there had been blown back by some indistinct explosion, but no scorch marks or soot could be seen except where the hearth used to be. Even so, that had been doused by him long before the explosion ever occurred. His eyes, half blind, struggled to find much else. Anything that told him just what the hell happened here. 

Above him the crows circled his head in a seething halo, shouting at him. He’d been ignoring the avian spirits for a time but his irritation was at its peak and prompted him to throw a fist. Massive white knuckles passed harmlessly through one feathered body, erupting into motes of light only to form back together moments later. Wings flailed and beaks snapped. 

“Sleipnir!” They sang, “Sleipnir! Sleipnir!”

The Nightlord stopped, shocked for a moment. Had his wife been stolen? His burning eyes snatched back and forth, body jerking with stress and unrepressed kill-urge. Still, he found nothing. 

“Speak clearly,” he barked, writhing in the snow. A violent thrust saw the spiked pommel of his chain glaive shoved into the ground. “Where is she!?”

Here

Sevatar paused, whirling at the waist. He had not heard or seen the thing coming at all and what had called to him wasn’t even a voice. He could not say what it was exactly, except that it looked to be a monstrously huge amalgam of equestrian bone. 24-WLF had kept horses her whole life and the hobby had not died away with their unwilling residence. Today, it seemed as though every single horse who had ever lived and died at the long house had risen from their earthen graves to serve once again. Several skulls stared back at him on necks of uncomfortable length. Unnumbered hooves walked across the snow without disturbing a single flake. 

And its torso? A forest of ribs delicately cradling a person wrapped in a leather coat. Before he could speak of it, the amalgam reared up, held aloft by nonexistent muscle and carefully spilled his wife onto the snow at his feet. 

“…Sleipnir,” Sevatar understood, gathering the groaning woman into his arms. “Loki is supposed to be the mother of the beast…hah.”

Placidly the undead mount folded in on itself to the chorus of rasping bone, laying down as if alive. Too many limbs with too many joints awkwardly tucked against a chest that no longer possessed flesh. He laughed, soft and relieved, running gloved hands across the many skulls that made up its collective heads. 

“Sleipnir,” he repeated. 

24-WLF woke angrily, her augmented leg ripping through her favorite leather coat in her fight to unravel herself. “Fuck!”

Sevatar’s bloody, sarcastic grin returned. “Well, good morning.”

“Fuck you,” she sighed, half her body sunk in the snow. Immediately the woman was surrounded by the clatter of bone, which she treated as if it were a cloud of flies, “oh, behave!”

Sleipnir rolled as if wounded, jaws flexing even if no sound came forth. His wife seemed to hear something regardless as she stood to chasten the undead beast. Sevatar knelt behind her, laughing.

“Later,” he beckoned. “Tell me what happened here?”

The woman stopped and turned on him, sour faced and ruffled, “the hell happen to you?”

The Nightlord continued to grin, running two fingers through the half healed mess that marked the left side of his head. “Wolves.”

Normally his vagueness would have irritated her, instead it made perfect sense. “So that’s who they were…but they couldn’t have been Space Wolves. Right?”

Retrieving his glaive, Sevatar pulled the hood completely over his face, unable to tolerate the light any longer. “They weren’t, you're right. They are Wolves, but not even Russ’s mangey lot would have been that…twisted.”

“They didn’t hurt me,” she confirmed quickly, tasting the question on his tongue. “This...my horses. They rose up out of the ground and…I don’t remember much.”

Sevatar bowed his head against the amethyst glare of late morning, gazing at the undead thing lounging on their lawn. He was almost certainly more amused than she was. 

“Oh, they tried, don’t get me wrong,” the woman continued, pulling steel. Her saber was stained dark with the memory of tainted blood. “It was strange though. They almost won. There were maybe…three or four of them and I was absolutely prepared to die fighting. Just about did too. Drove my sword into the ribs of one of them and it didn’t even flinch. The horses held them off for a while, but bone can’t cut through ceramite.”

Sleipnir rattled in protest but 24-WLF ignored the creature. “I guess everything just…stopped. Like a broken chronometer. It was like time didn’t exist for a moment. Then it all just…burst outwards.” A gesture accompanied her words, fingers splaying apart. “I thought maybe one of them had thrown a krak because the long house exploded and I was thrown into the trees. Uh, really I don’t have any other context than that. I just now woke up.”

“Seems about right,” Sevatar jested, shoving his wife into the pile of bones resting at her flank. The woman cursed him colorfully, wagging around in the snow until she could stand again. “But we can’t stay here.”

“To Svartalfheim then?”

Sevatar squinted. “Aye, that very well might be our only choice. If they haven’t already locked themselves in."

“We need to get you into your armor and I need to find shelter,” the woman continued, grunting as Sleipnir narrowed its collection of bodies and dipped between her legs. The seat she found herself in was lumpy and uncomfortable but it was far better then slogging through three feet of snow. 

While he could not see much from behind the woolen veil of his hood, the Nightlord knew that Svartalfheim loomed in the dark, miles and miles from the nearest town, nestled deep in the heart of some nameless mountain. The Imperium called them the Mechanicus, servants of the machine god. Why they were here, the man had little idea nor care, but he had a somewhat shaky mutual deal with the rust robed waifs. Its how his glaive and armor still functioned well despite the years that ground by with their disuse. At last he could be properly armed for war again. He ran his hand along the metal leg of his wife, grateful for her suggestion as Sleipnir carried her along beside him.

Returning to the intact foundation, Sevatar toed at the floor boards until his boots caught on a partially ruined hinge and ripped it free of its mountings. Ghostly amethyst light caught on the edges of something sharp and humanoid existing within the dark underneath. Only with great effort did the Nightlord unearth the thing. His armor sat mag locked to its rack, gritty with a coating of silt that shed from its surface like water. 

In this unreal luminance the midnight blue seemed almost black and the veins of lightning that crawled across the faded ceramite curves might as well have been true electricity. Even inert and unworn the towering Mark IV armor seemed alive with violence. Sevatar, dusting dirt and rust from his clothes and leather armor, stared up at his valued possession with what could only be reverent excitement. His chain glaive was one thing, but his armor was something else entirely. His tongue rolled with Nostroman murder prayers to the malign thing, one hand pressed against the sneering winged skull molded into the chest. The other hand shifted unsubtly towards his trousers. 

24-WLF, to her credit, left him to it and set her mind to work. Sleipnir, apparently attuned to her thoughts already, gently pushed its many legs through the snow and began to dig. Their supply wagon had been buried since yesterday and with the snow storm finally abating after so long the unseemly construct was able to pull it free. How it did this with no muscle or apparent source of strength was something the woman thought not to question. Instead she attempted to figure out a way to strap the phantasmal creature to the pole and bars. 

This…turned out to be unnecessary. Able to reform itself at will, Sleipnir grew a series of skeletal arms that were only approximate to how actual arms looked or functioned. This was, mainly, due to the fact that horses simply did not have hands or arms and certainly Sleipnir only had a basic idea of both. None the less, it grasped the pole and bar and gave a firm tug, peering at her over its shoulder. If 24-WLF didn’t know any better, she’d say it looked…smug. 

Amused, 24-WLF clung to the beast’s necks and addressed her husband. “You done jerking off over there? We’ve got a wagon.”

She did not need to see him to know that he was attempting to readjust himself. “Oh, you’ve catch me,” he was, of course, being entirely sarcastic, “I suppose I’ll just need to take care of this on the way there.”

“No,” the woman deadpanned. “You are not fucking me in the middle of a haunted forest out in the damned cold. Especially not in front of a bunch of a bunch of dead horses.”

Sevatar began to pout but the undead horses began to kick the wagon in irritation. The look his wife gave him was even worse. Realizing defeat, the Nightlord was forced to concede, “oh, rather ironic considering all of the other precarious things I’ve fucked you in front of.” He snarled, angrily shoving his pants back on. 

Spiting with a firm slap on her ass, 24-WLF then helped the Nightlord load his armor into the wagon piece by piece. By no means an easy task. At least the time allowed them to carefully look over the rest of the property. Chicken coops laid in a broken bloody mess from who knows what assault and there was nothing to say about the grain stores. Whatever had been summoned at the start of Ragnarok had all but sacked whatever the two of them might call food. Not even a scrap of raw meat was left for them. What was left of the poor livestock added up to be nothing more streaks of offal smeared across the snow. Inedible. 

Frustrated and uncomfortable in his own pants, Sevatar marched away from their once home and reaped a trail through the wood. The passage of time became convoluted and impossible to track as the sun remained locked behind the planet’s cancerous moon. Light ebbed and faded at will without direction or reason, irritating them all the more. Stranger still, the forests were seemingly empty. The birchwood whispered only with the wind, their path clear and unhindered. It did nothing to sooth 24-WLF’s paranoia. 

“Everything is in hiding,” Sevatar reported numbly. “I can smell living creatures below the snow. Smart of them really.”

“Then where’s the demons? The Wolves? What about the ones that tried to kill me? I’ve not seen even a scrap of fur left behind.”

“I…I don’t know,” Sevatar confessed, uneasy. “I slaughtered the one that called itself Heimdall but reality reclaimed the corpse and every drop of blood it spilt. It behaved like a demon when killed. It simply stopped existing."

24-WLF narrowed her steely eyes, thinking. “I think I’ve figured it out. We’re replaying something that’s already happened. Why else would there be a recorded legend about it?”

“There are two things humans fear most, dear wife,” he held up two fingers. “First is the unknown, second…is the future. False prophets and mutterings of doom and gloom are all the same. Born from fear and stupidity.”

24-WLF’s gaze became poisonous. “Isn't that what drove your father mad? False prophecies and mutterings of doom and gloom?”

Sevatar grinned, slow and angry. “Oh, no, dear wife. He was right. He’s always been right. But he hated that, in the end. This planet isn’t much better, I guess. We’re unknown factors screwing up a tradition thousands of years in the making. You know the damned Wolf called me Loki, right?”

“I,” The realization that soured her face was sickly sweet to his eyes. “And I suppose this thing I’m sitting on is Sleipnir. And I am Sigyn.”

“Did the Wolves who attacked you call you that?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure, I was too busy trying to ram my sword through their hearts to listen.”

Sevatar felt a renewal stirring in his loins and this time he was unable to keep his mouth shut. “I really should drag you from that horse. Have you under me, pull the clothes from your body. Show you what warmth I can give you.”

The statement had its own effect on her, heart thumping with the promise of sweet adrenaline. He wasn’t especially good at hiding his lust and she was no better. Her heavy blouse and petticoats suddenly felt too warm, too constraining. Finally, she sat up, defiant, and growled. “Take me."


	3. Svartalfheim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The planet has the power to erase as well as corrupt. Nothing stays sacred when abandoned long enough.

Svartalfheim rose out of the earth as the planet’s foremost point of its crown. Jagged structures clinging like broken insects to the steep slopes indicated the mountain was as much metal as it was stone. Sevatar had only been there a few times and he hadn’t much enjoyed it. In truth, the crags were only a facade compared to the depths these waifs had dug for themselves. With nests plunging miles into the earth, Sevatar likened them to ancient Terran ants rather than anything vaguely humanoid. They looked it too. While the Night Lord hadn't bothered to remember names, he did remember their appearances well enough. Tall, thin and festooned with a few too many dendrites for his liking. One, he recalled vaguely, let her own organic legs atrophy to better use the limbs she used to climb the spidering tunnels of her personal chambers. Supposedly they were once a Mechanicus force stationed on the planet to mine precious metals, but the grace of the Imperium was few and far between now a days, letting the cyborgs become…these things. Elves, the locals called them. Sevatar laughed when he first caught wind of that, but context became important. Either way, they owed him their services and he intended to make them follow up.

Behind him, 24-WLF had been asleep for…a time. She would have occupied the cart but the bulk of his armor filled the bed so Sleipnir’s amassed shoulder blades had to do. Certainly it wasn’t comfortable. The woman shifted and grunted every couple of minutes but her human body needed the rest. At least the weather still held out, even if the idea of a normal climate was laughable at the moment. Something like nighttime finally approached, the poisoned purple light fading out into a deep, ominous violet by the time they approached the foothills tens of hours later. A town that sprouted from the profit of the elves should suit their needs well enough, provided it was still somehow there. 

It was…not. The structures were intact, but the people…they didn’t seem right. Sevatar paused at the edge of the birchwood, watching in dull wonder as phantasms that should have been humans wondered through the bare avenues. There should have been sound. There should have been color. Lights in the doors, the streets, the windows. Instead, there was a fuchsia darkness and a throng of staggering shadows. Sevatar wasn’t entirely sure if he felt at all threatened or not. Sleipnir and its sleeping mistress froze as still as a hunting dog that caught sight of its prey. Everything about the bony apparition bled tension. Slowly, delicately, it grew osseous arms and peeled a complaining 24-WLF from its back. She too went still as she noticed why everyone else had stopped.The woman hissed, soft and cat-like then reaffirmed her position on the mount’s back. Obediently, it folded itself into a more suitable shape, all poise and danger. 

Yet nothing happened. The collection of shades merely wondered about as if they still had bodies to move. Even Sevatar's murder of crows clacked in confusion, muttering in tongues or settling on his shoulders to ask him more direct questions. None of which he understood of course. He brushed them off with an irritated swat and gripped his chain glaive tightly. Many of its teeth were missing inside Heimdall's flexor muscles, never to be seen again. He was, of course, confident the weapon still ran just fine, but wouldn’t have bet his life on it being able to shed blood nearly as well as when it had a full smile. The machine spirit certainly seemed to agree. 24-WLF, however, was completely unarmed. Her sword had been left in the lower heart of another Wolf. Sevatar didn’t trust her in a fight even if his wife would have violently disagreed. 

Running the calculations in his head took so little time that the Night Lord was already moving before 24-WLF and Sleipnir could finish getting themselves adjusted. The snow drifts thinned visibly as he powered down the slope, seeing no tactical ways of approach other than barging directly into town. The walking patterns of the shadow people did not change at all. Did not divert an iota even as his leather armored bulk came charging through the broken gate and into the main avenue. Either they did not notice him, or they didn’t consider him a threat. Confused and more than a little disappointed, he slowed to a stop. It was then he noticed that many of the dark shapes simply…moved through him. Sevatar stood there, blinking ink dark eyes for several moments as his companions caught up. Sleipnir moved not across the ground as he had previously thought, but glided through the air a bare inch above whatever solid substance was below it. Too he saw what actually powered the osseous being. About eight ectoplasmic entities moved in symbiosis, bringing life to the dead limbs that once belonged to them. He saw, when it paused, equine faces staring back at him, a palpable intelligence within the phantasmic amalgam. Only he could see this, surely, and so he ignored it with a uncomfortable grunt.

24-WLF, riding bolt upright on its shoulders, looked annoyed. “Well?”

Sevatar did not answer. His mind had turned outwards once more, staring coldly at the mountain still some miles ahead of them. It was then his enhanced hearing started to pick up a distinct sound. Like the rampant buzzing of several swarms of insects or the sharp, ozone snap of a power field set too high for the weapon it was engulfing. Too he saw the greater, uglier shapes scrabbling across a faint aura coating Svartalfheim in an unseemly gossamer sheen. It took him barely a nanosecond to realize what that was before the Nostroman blood within him pounded with an amused fascination. 

“Ah, so the elves have a Gellar field,” he replied at last. 

“Really now?” 24-WLF soured with a forward hunch. “And how would they have gotten one big enough? And how would they have fit it across a mountain face none the less?”

Again, Sevatar did not answer. His mind, instead, was intent on getting a better look at it. To…assess its usefulness of course. Yes, exactly. There was, perhaps, a small something like a giggle bursting from his scar twisted lips.

“No, you’re not stealing it either,” she hissed.

Sevatar admitted, he was rather impressed with how well his wife was able to read him at times, “oh, worry not. I’m sure the elves have better uses for it than I would.”

“Sure,” unconvinced, she and the boney monstrosity disregarded the erased shades of humans and continued towards the mountain. He followed, having little better to do.

“At least now we know what’s been attracting all of the…dangerous entities in the area,” he commented idly. As they approached the air vibrated and the sound became a rake of ice across his skin, shivering through his clothes. 

“The question is,” 24-WLF continued for him, plugging her ears as the noise reached at last. “How are we going to get in exactly? I haven’t been here, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right,” Sevatar could not help but sound a touch sarcastic. “Be warned, the elves aren’t exactly…wholesome things.”

“I’ve never met a member of the Mechanicus who was.”

“You’ll see,” he hummed with purposeful vagueness, only adding to the mounting irritation of his wife, much to the man's continued humor. 

“I willingly traded in my Imperial uniform and gas mask for this?” Her anger was not entirely directed at him, but the woman knew it would sting just as well. “Reminds me of when we first met.”

“I remember,” he sighed, unwilling to admit that his tendency to verbal bait her wasn’t appreciated this time. 

“Of course you do. You liked me because I was the only one who bit back,” she snapped. “Everyone else was always afraid of you. I didn’t know who you actually were back then, but that hardly changed a thing.”

“Humans can be such boring, terrible creatures, but…” He paused, something painful reaching in from time addled depths. Places he didn’t want coming to light. “Well, I liked you. I could not say why or how.”

“And you still can’t. I know you,” the woman pointed out. 

“No,” he was forced to agree, already uncomfortable with the conversation. Without a way to change subjects, he simply ended it there continued onward, marching through a veritable forest of shades and memories. 

24-WLF fumed silently from the spiny perch of her mount, very much wishing to strike him. But she could not understand why he had made her so angry. Inappropriate timing was Sevatar’s bread and butter. It formed the bases of how he dealt with people in a public setting, the only way he could really converse. It shouldn’t have been affecting someone as heavily indoctrinated against emotion as her. Yet, somehow, 24-WLF felt it. Without further comprehension nor the ability to cope, her mind felt like a prison, but at least it was a prison she shared with him. That had, all together, been what aligned them at a seemingly cosmic level despite sanity preaching otherwise. Some nights when Fimbulwinter, the planet’s three year long cold season, gnawed at the birchwood hours of conversation could be dedicated to trying to sort themselves out. When they weren’t busy giving in to their more primal instincts. That was…certainly been another factor in their making their forced marriage work. Spite, being only the third. In truth, her feelings for Sevatar were far more complicated than the former Imperial guard could have described. Especially not one who’s whole life revolved around killing people from horseback. Her regiment, hell her whole homeworld, was infamous for breeding mass produced killers with the same level of emotional maturity as the horses they rode into battle. Krieg had been nothing but death, but marriage was somehow just slightly worse.

Wordlessly, she and the bone creature followed.

 

“Breech cleared.” A clattering voice called from the dark. Just ahead, thick webbing pulsed and expanded, responding to minute changes in air pressure in order to fully enclose the gap. Trapped within its sinuous grasp, something that should not continue to move, did. The voice clicked with irritation and zapped it once, twice more. The desiccated body vibrated like a misaligned axle, warbling with a voice that had once been fully human. The webbing that made up a vast majority of the myriad tunnels continued to crawl over the body until it was smothered. 

“Do not bother with it.” A second voice said, a long arm reaching out a spidery claw to pull at the prod. The first figure, more hunch-backed with armor than what could be called functional, slowly drew away of their own accord, “there is going to be more. The Gellar field can only hold for so long.”

Two entirely new sets of limbs flickered in what could have been nervousness if the creature had been more human. For now, it seemed more out of insectile agitation. It clutched the electro-prod to its still organic chest, “I realize this, superior.”

“Then you should also understand the need to continue moving,” retorted the second. This one was far taller and could almost be called elegant were it not for the slow, jerky movements of the things it used to call legs. The timbre of its voice possibly marked it as a she, were such concepts of any matter to it. Her companion, none the less, followed along. He still cleanly identified as male, a full century or so away from abandoning the flesh entirely. Some members of his cult, he fondly recalled, aged so perfectly they were all but one with the Nest now. Only the surface walkers called this place Svartalfheim. Only the surface walkers called them Elves. They were, above all else, Mechanicus. Tech priests and priestesses dedicated to an Omnisia that had been thousands of years out of touch. No matter. The ancient decrees stood, even if the children born down here were becoming increasingly less…human. 

He followed his superior's mantis-like movements without further protest, his own beetle body winding down through a tunnel that his previously organic form could not have navigated at all. It twisted hard to the left before narrowing and diverting down at a perfect ninety degree angle, bringing them directly into the secondary level where more of the once human things might enter. Drauger, the surface walkers in the old town called them. Undead things, they had claimed. In reality the cursed creatures weren’t much more than severely mutated humans. Former towns people, if one had to describe them. 

Down here he could hear the constant ethereal buzzing of the Gellar field, indicating the surface was just scant feet away, separated only by rock. Something about the noise invigorated him as they passed by one of the massive engines powering it. 

It did not fail to hide an additional set of noises his superior clearly picked out before he did. Suspended above the final opening with all eight limbs firmly clamped to the walls, her whole form looked perfectly inhuman against the light. He had exactly no time to admire her as twin blades pulled free from arms that only appeared fleshed and swung through the air. Another buzzing, discordant and sharp, carried over the sound of the Gellar field. He too dropped from the opening, three of his six limbs grabbing the edge just in time to see him safely down. Just in time to be immediately surrounded by a whirlwind of osseous projectiles. Plus one completely unmutated human. He screeched with the sound of troubled metal as he staggered back, more from surprise than anything, and jabbed the human in the flank with the unactivated prod. The force should have been enough to at least dislodge her, but her pain twisted face only grew redder and she dived for his hooded face as soon as she got a look at it. 

It was fortunate that the fighting died down almost instantly. A pair of giant pale hands yanked her screaming from his breathless form. Righting himself, the young tech priest mindfully did not bothering questioning things. He could tell that trying to speak while his superior exchanged several heated words with a giant that was hardly human himself was…not a smart course of action. It was also not smart to turn around when he did. Looming above him in an utterly incomprehensible shape was a thing made entirely of bone but was somehow frighteningly sentient. He thought it…best to simply ignore it, even as it smoothly flowed over his head to perch just behind the inhuman giant and the screaming, petulant human. 

“Sevatar,” his superior hissed. “You dare infiltrate the Nest?”

“Why would I not be here?” He shot back, all smiles and poison as he adjusted his grip on the other woman. “You’re the one with the fucking Gellar field in the middle of a warp schism. Do you happen to know how this all manages to work?”

“Classified,” she snapped, sharp and quick like her blades. The tech priest realized she had actually managed to strike him, a fresh line of livid red rapidly vanishing along his cheekbone. Sevatar, as she had called him, manage to wound her worse, however. Two of her eight magnificent limbs had been brutally clove from her body, but it did her credit she was showing none of the pain. Feeling an emotion edging dangerously close to embarrassment, he realized he had dropped the electro-prod. Without a word, he picked it up. An off-white splinter of bone was lodged impossibly in the power pack, rendering the whole unit worthless. Numbly, he let it fall from his still organic hands. Glancing that way, he swore the bone creature looked smug. 

“Is it now?” Sevatar continue to barb her. But he wasn’t making any further gestures of violence, leaning lazily against his chain glaive with one arm full of sour wife. 

“Yes,” she continued, gliding in a smooth circle to both retrieve her severed limbs and work herself into a flanking position above him. “You need to leave immediately. You and that…apparition!”

“Now, now. That’s my wife you’re speaking of,” he grinned so hard his eyes crinkled. “But what was your name…"

“Agentha,” was her quick retort, cutting off the feigned awkwardness with a flicker of steel. “Don’t be coy, you’ve met me before…you have a wife?"

He held the human woman up like one might hold a kitten or a puppy. A fact that neither female looked particularly happy about. Less happy was the boney apparition lurking completely ignored behind them. It perched around both husband and wife like a mantle, rattling noisily. 

The severely awkward exchange dragged on for several moments before the tech priest intervened. “We should…escort them to the Magos?” 

With the quickness of a spider, Agentha’s head snapped around and for a moment he swore he felt the ice of her blades against his neck…but no, that wasn’t possible. Sevatar had slashed them off. 

“Yes, take me to the Magos. He’s the only one who knows how Astartes armor functions,” Sevatar insisted and so followed another pregnant pause. Fortunately, no further blood was spilled.

“Fine,” Agentha warbled angrily. “Birger. You handle them.”

Birger, so named, hunched forward in defeat and hefted his beetle-shelled frame, abandoning his weapon in the dirt. The journey to the heart of the mountain would be a long, long exchange indeed.


End file.
